George Bent

George Bent was caught between worlds. He was born in a tipi outside the walls of Bent’s Fort in 1843. Child of William Bent and Owl Woman, he was called by his Cheyenne name as a child. After his mother died, Bent was sent to white boarding schools back east, then followed school friends into the Civil War. Captured by the Union, he ultimately got back to Colorado, lived with maternal relatives and survived the Sand Creek Massacre. In the aftermath of that atrocity, he identified only with the Cheyenne, and in later years, seeing their culture disappearing, resolved to tell his and the Cheyenne people’s story. Until his death in 1918, George Bent wrote hundreds of letters, pages full of description, drawings and maps (now in the collection of the Denver Public Library) — a rare and personal testament of the lifeways of the Cheyenne people before the irreversible advance of expanding America.

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